Halle Berry in love split

Split: A smiling Halle Berry with husband Eric Benet earlier this year

Halle Berry has split from her husband after three years of an often troubled marriage.

The Oscar-winning actress has issued a statement saying she had left R&B singer and composer Eric Benet, who has admitted cheating on her several times.

"Eric and I have had marital problems for some time now and have tried to work things out together," the 37-year-old actress said through her publicist.

"However, at this point, I feel we need time apart to re-evalute our union. We ask that you respect our privacy as we are going through this emotional time."

The couple married after meeting at a party to celebrate the premiere of her Emmy-award winning Introducing Dorothy Dandridge.

But the relationship hit the rocks within months of the wedding, when she also adopted his daughter India, with reports that Eric had moved out of their Los Angeles home, leaving the actress in tears and severely depressed.

He was caught cheating with a woman he had known for seven years and is said to have slept with her days before Berry became the first black woman to win last year's Oscar for best actress for her performance in Monster's Ball.

The marriage hit another low point last year when Benet admitted sleeping with at least 10 women, including two of the actress's closest friends.

Although the couple almost split up then, they patched up their relationship through counselling, with Benet agreeing to enter a rehabilitation clinic in Arizona for sex addiction.

Afterwards he said: "I have made some terrible mistakes but the truth is, I love my wife."

Berry said at the time: "One of the best things about Eric is that he loves me any old kind of way that I am."

Recently Berry was reported to be seeing rocker Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit after he flew to visit her at a rented house outside Vancouver twice in two weeks.

One of the most beautiful women in Hollywood, Berry has a history of being unlucky in love.

Her first marriage, to baseball star David Justice, also collapsed after three years, with Berry forced to take out a restraining order.

Berry said that the break-up left her so depressed she almost committed suicide. "I felt worthless, like such a failure. I worried what would people think about my marriage being over," she said later.

Another boyfriend hit her so hard that she became partially deaf. Berry is one of Hollywood's busiest actresses. She was Jinx in last year's James Bond movie Die Another Day and the mutant superhero Storm in X2.

Berry opens next month in the psychological thriller Gothika and has just started filming a new adaptation of Catwoman in Vancouver.

But the glamour of her film career hides a difficult past that included a childhood in Cleveland haunted by racial prejudice. Her white mother, who is from Liverpool, married American serviceman Jerome Berry who abandoned them when Halle was four.

An alcoholic and drug addict, he had no contact with her for 12 years. Berry said she regretted not being able to patch up their relationship before he died of liver failure this year.